Halle Butler: Jillian

Jillian wanted to start crying or screaming, but unfortunately she couldn’t do either.

“I just thought you would like an opportunity to help out your son,” said Jillian.

“No, that’s not what’s going on here. You want me to pay to fix your car.”

Megan couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but she knew Jillian was talking to her ex and therefore she knew (by the nature of their conversation) that Jillian did not in fact have a child support court date next week.

“Which I believe proves, not that you care,” she said later that night to Randy, “that she is a hysterical, pathological liar.”

“Ok,” said Randy. “But I still don’t see why you care so much.”

“I care so much, Randy, because the way this woman behaves is completely disgusting.”

“Yeah, well, so she lied. So what? She’s embarrassed. She doesn’t want her employers and coworkers to think she’s a criminal. I get that. I understand it.”

“Yeah, ok. But I guess what I haven’t been able to communicate is, I mean, I get why she wouldn’t want to be thought of as a criminal, but I think she does want to get caught. Either that or she’s just a total moron. Why would she wait until after telling everyone that she had a child support court date to call her ex and ask him for money? And loudly. There’s a lot at stake. She lied to get codeine, too, and she’s been taking it at work.”

“I don’t understand why you care,” said Randy.

“It’s disturbing, that’s why! Because she does these elaborate performances, like chewing her ex out and asking for painkillers, but on the other hand she acts like no one is watching. That’s it. Everything with her is an act, but she behaves like her acts are invisible to everyone.”

“Ah, if only she knew,” said Randy. He cleaned some crap from underneath his toenail.

“She’s practically shitting on the floor,” said Megan.

“Mmmhm,” said Randy.

“It’s like, don’t you finish concocting worlds like that when you’re fifteen?”

“What worlds?” Randy asked. He was thinking about how much longer he and Megan would stay together.

“The parallel worlds in which the lies aren’t lies,” said Megan. “It’s like, I remember I didn’t do some project on dinosaurs or whatever in sixth grade, so a week after it was due, I broke into my science teacher’s room and stuck my paper into the stack of graded papers. And then I convinced myself that she must have just overlooked it, and practiced how I would say ‘that’s strange, I wonder why you didn’t grade it?’ That’s what Jillian is doing, but she’s not a child. She has a child, and it’s terrifying to think of her in charge of something that fragile when she’s living in a delusional reality!”

“What happened with the dinosaur paper?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Megan. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter.” She picked up her beer and drank from it.

Jillian went into the bathroom that night and sat on the floor and cried while she listened to the radio. When the commercials came on, she felt self-conscious and had to stop crying for a second, but then when the music came back on she cried again. She did this for 20 minutes. The bathroom smelled like dog urine.

AMANDA WAS AT HOME, thinking about sending Megan an email.

The email would say something like, “I’m sorry we got into a fight, but I don’t take back anything I said, because I really do think you have a huge problem that you need to snap out of or you’re going to find yourself without any friends someday very soon.”

But then she found herself saying things like, “Or has that day already come?” out loud to herself in her bedroom in a gravelly voice, and found herself cocking her head to the side and furrowing her brows while she said more things like, “I mean, who do you think you are?” so she decided maybe she wasn’t ready to write Megan an email, and she didn’t want to do it if her heart wasn’t in it.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Megan. It was becoming kind of an obsession. To be fair, a part-time obsession. She didn’t loose sleep over it or skip work because of it, but still. When her mind had a free moment to wander, and there were a surprising number of those in the day, it went to Megan, and Amanda replayed the fight they’d had, and she replayed her victory over Megan, and that only fueled her thirst for another victory. She wanted to reform Megan, get her to stop whining and get a better job and be more friendly. Maybe get her out of the house? Maybe her relationship was bad? Maybe they could start jogging together?

Probably not.

And why hadn’t Megan written to apologize for being a dick? And blah-de-blah and on and on.

JILLIAN WIPED HER FACE and left the bathroom to make dinner. She made a Healthy Choice microwave dinner for herself—something with chicken—and made a child’s microwave dinner for Adam—something with mac ’n cheese. After dinner, Jillian poured herself two bowls of cereal. She sat in front of the tv and she didn’t have any money, and the dog and Adam had no idea that meant they didn’t have any money, either. It was weird to look around and see nice carpet, a kid and a dog, all in the glow of a tv, and to have a full stomach, but to know she had no money. Maybe she would start smoking again. She got up from the chair and got an oatmeal cream pie from the cupboard and ate it in the kitchen, threw away the wrapper, poured herself a glass of D milk, and went back to her chair.

The next morning, Elena drove to Jillian’s house listening to Christian rock and feeling happily superior. That was the only reason she did this, and she was old enough to be honest with herself about it. She was a hardened older lady, and she knew she helped Jillian because it gave her pleasure to have Jillian on the end of her hook and at her mercy. It gave her pleasure, also, to witness Jillian’s life, which she had heard about in great (if muddled) detail at church healing groups, which she often led. Jillian’s life was shitty, and Jillian didn’t know how to improve it because she was too stupid.

Elena was old enough not to lie to herself about the way she really felt about things.

Jillian was the kind of person who went for the short fix instead of the long fix. She knew nothing about sacrifice and never would, and it was a pleasure for Elena to watch Jillian fail, because Jillian’s way of life stood in opposition to Elena’s. It wasn’t that Elena didn’t want two cookies and a bag of chips with lunch, just to grab an obvious example of something symptomatic, but she knew it would rot her body, so she abstained. Elena delighted to hear Jillian talk about her plans to diet, because she knew that Jillian was too weak and was all talk. That was another thing that Elena wasn’t, and that was all talk. If she wanted to volunteer at a homeless center, she did it. She forewent the “Oh, how nice of you”s she knew she’d get if she told her friends as soon as the idea came into her head, and the reward for this tightlippedness was a solid, sturdy respect that was given to a woman who was so humble and selfless that she didn’t even ask for congratulations, but just went out to the homeless center and volunteered.

Elena noticed that she smelled like Woolite. Jillian will smell like baby burp, even though she doesn’t have a baby, thought Elena.

Elena drove with nice posture. She parked, she got out of the car, she walked up the stairs, and she made no plans. With an upper hand like Elena’s, there was no need to rehearse. Not with someone like Jillian, at least. It was like talking to a filth-covered child.

She had keys, but out of the appearance of politeness, she rapped curtly on the door several times and heard, “Oh, hey, I unlocked it, come on in!” from the other side of the threshold.